No, this is not a silly attempt
on my part to represent Nietzsche as some kind of ‘covert Christian.’ The title must obviously be
taken with a large grain of salt and the necessary question mark. But the
reason why I have chosen this particular wording in the first place is because
there is an echo of truth in it, in the sense that will be presently explained.
To be sure, I am often
uncomfortable with Nietzsche’s attack on the morality of Christianity, not
because I am so anxious to rise to the defense of a particular religious
practice, but for the much larger reason that no one, not even Nietzsche, can
so casually dismiss an existing source of absolute morality, even if heavily
polluted, as it were, without offering a
viable alternative, and it is here that Nietzsche is perhaps wanting-- his
food for thought is ambrosial, but where is the nourishment for hope? Where is
an acceptable positive moral alternative? To him, hope is a lie, but to him,
too, truth kills. How is society supposed to sustain its life, then? By a lie?
At least, not by Nietzsche’s reason alone!
His attack on the ‘unnoble’
morality of Christianity as the “crown of love of
the very same tree whose roots were deep in hatred,” is once again a
stunning metaphor (something I have come to expect from Nietzsche, reminding me
somewhat-- not that I wish to compare them!-- of the immense intellectual
admiration for the Soviet experiment in Communism on the part of all those
noble European characters whose valuation was based on a theoretical principle
with considerable disregard for practicality, or maybe for the reason of the
illusory success at the time of the earthshaking social experiment known as the
Bolshevik Revolution, that was rooted not just in some positive moral and
political ideas, but also, and mainly, in the highly negative Great-Russian
nationalist ressentiment toward Capitalism, which made the Revolution
possible in the first place. It was not only the generally good feeling on the
part of the European intellectuals toward all social engineering, epitomized
post factum in every utopian project, but also, their very negative attitude
toward Capitalism, which they were so eager to condemn, together with Marx, on
moral grounds, using both Karl Marx and the Bible as their authority.)
To be continued...
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